The present invention regards a voice message managing method, in particular for a voice data recording/playing/editing electronic device.
As is known, electronic devices are available on the market for the recording/playing/editing of voice data, such as telephone automatic intercepts present also in cell phones or DECTs, portable voice recorders, and the like, which use solid-state memory devices, for example of the flash EEPROM type, to store voice messages coming from a user.
The advantages that may be obtained from using these solid-state memory devices rather than magnetic tapes inside electronic devices for the recording/playing/editing of voice data are described in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,170, with particular reference to the possibility of modifying a voice message previously recorded inside the solid-state memory device by simply erasing a part of the voice message itself or by entering therein a new voice message. The U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,170, however, does not provide any teaching on how to manage the voice messages inside an electronic device for the recording/playing/editing of voice data.
In this connection, a possibility for managing voice messages of a known type consists in memorizing voice segments, corresponding to portions of a voice message to be memorized, in memory locations contained inside the solid-state memory device. Each voice segment is associated to a respective pointer which is contained inside the voice segment itself (for example as header), and the set of pointers determines the structure of the voice messages.
The above solution is not very efficient and flexible as regards implementation of the functions of partial editing and erasing of voice messages, in so far as the information for management of the latter is contained inside the voice messages themselves.
An embodiment of the present invention provides a voice message managing method for a voice data recording/playing/editing electronic device that overcomes the limitations and drawbacks described above with reference to the known art.